Autour des comédies musicales
Designed by Nicolas Guinand; PyroDigital Firing with 3900 cues; Final3D Visualization
Once again we faced a difficult day meteorologically with everyone glued to the radar throughout. A hot and humid start to the day lead to strong storms with heavy rains in both the early and late afternoon periods, but finally the skies cleared out around 6pm as a gusty and much cooler airflow moved into the area. For the first time this year, the winds were almost directly in the face of the audience – this lead to less than ideal viewing conditions due to the smoke (though the humidity had fallen drastically) as well as some debris coming close to the audience. The smoke direction did enhance the lasers though.
Nicolas had said he wanted the show to be viewed as one entire performance, rather than a series of segments. This is easy to say but not so easy to do in practice. The four laser segments tend to break a display up into four “movements”, though the overlapping of the pyrotechnics with the start and end of each section does reduce the distraction they otherwise cause. Also, the design of the laser segments was the best we’ve seen so far this year, though I still find it distracting and somewhat annoying.
I found the early part of the display better designed than the middle part as great use was made of all the display area and a build-up in grandeur of effects did take place as Nicolas had indicated during the interview. There were some nice surprises from ramp 5 with big fans of effects that caused me to exclaim “wow”. Ramp 4 was also well used when it was in play too – 180 degree firing that filled the entire width of the display area. The one-shot horizontal effects across ramp 3 were well done, as were all the comets and candles fired across the lake from both ramps 3 and 5. Also we saw high-quality double-ascension girandolas sequenced well so they could be seen.
The pyrotechnic quality was largely good, with some brilliant 9-colour-changing mines of stars as well a glorious Hamex shells with colour-changing pistils too. We had some dazzling photoflash effects as well, but I found the promised special cascading studata was not as exciting as it had been billed. One thing is clear, though, is that a computer visualization of a display is way less impressive than seeing the actual show fired. The screen creates a very limited viewport compared to the immersive experience of being sat in the grandstands at La Ronde.
In the middle section of the show, though, I found some of the sequences on the simplistic side which lead me to think of how I used to write my reports in the 1990s “volleys of pastel shells with crossed-candles below”. This was unfortunate as these sequences didn’t appear to lead anywhere. Also, a few times, the fireworks ended just a bit too soon before the music.
The soundtrack was very good and enjoyable, but I found the Cowboy Fringants section, whilst a nice nod to the Quebecois audience, not really fitting into the overall performance. The finale was magnificent, with fantastic use of the lake via huge silver comet nautical shells which brought great cheers from the audience.
Overall, this was a very good display, but it didn’t quite reach the level I had expected. I found the middle sections a bit simplistic and also the colour palette seemed a bit limited and less vibrant than I had expected (based on seeing parts of the Final3D visualization). This could well have been due to the wind direction and the smoke interfering with the brilliance of some of the products. There was also too much repetition of the same kind of effects, again in the middle portions of the display. I had found Sugyp’s 2016 display to be a bit more of a stand-out in the competition that year. However, the level of the competition this year is much more even as all the displays have been at a very good level. After seeing the first four of six, anyone of them is a contender for a Bronze Jupiter, but I can’t say there’s a stand-out for Silver or Gold yet. The Sugyp display is up there towards the top of the list, especially as it ticked many important boxes such as the use of the entire display area and the lake. We still have two strong contenders yet to perform – and the weather most definitely can play an important role in their success or otherwise. I think had the wind not been so directly at the audience, my impression of the Sugyp display might have been different – though they were fortunate that the storms earlier in the day didn’t appear to have much visible impact beyond a couple of non-firing flames here and there.